Rookie filmmakers Jarrad Paul and Andrew Mogel delivered a charmer with their bromance “The D-Train,” which stars Jack Black as Daniel, an anally-retentive Pittsburgh man trying and failing to round up classmates for their 20th anniversary reunion. He’s so unpopular that his fellow board members on the reunion committee go out for beers without inviting him.
When he spots the class studmuffin Oliver Lawless (James Marsden, an underrated comic actor) in a goofy TV commercial for sunscreen, consider his world rocked. D-man, D-Rock, whatever he calls himself, Daniel’s got to get himself to La-La-Land to try to lasso Oliver for the big reunion, figuring the reflected glory will finally make Daniel popular. So he convinces his technophobe boss (a very funny Jeffrey Tambor) to go on a trip to L.A. in pursuit of a fictitious business deal Dan claims to have on the front burner. Instead, Dan meets Oliver for a beer and things get a little crazy. It turns out Oliver (who is anything but a success at acting) has something missing in his life, and he takes a liking to the loser he barely remembers from school.
“The D Train” is a good-humored, warm-hearted movie in which Black, as usual, excels. The screwball nature of the early going livens things up, with increasingly farfetched plot twists keeping things fast and funny.
Even Dan work’s and sex life show signs of renewal, and the reunion is suddenly looking like a smashing success. In the last half hour, though, the movie runs somewhat short on ideas as a painfully awkward moment from the L.A. misadventure begins to obsess Dan and everyone else, leading to a funny climactic scene at the reunion but also steering things in a direction that proves somewhat of a dead end. Still, the movie is cute, breezy fun.